Sunday, November 15, 2015

My dad grew up on Star Trek and since I can remember I have been shown every Trek film and just about the whole television series, both Star Trek Generation and the original. So, this film was highly anticipated by us both. Boy were we into it! So much so that my father actually became a little emotional (he's an emotional guy). It brings him back to his childhood and remembering exactly the technology they had, dreaming one day he could live this life.

There were two "Trek Tech" as I like to call them, that were vital in defeating Nero.

1. Warp Drive

2. Red Matter

Starting with Warp Drive, this was used through out the plot line of the film. It gave them the ability to travel at the speed of light in order to reach great distances in a short amount of time. They were able to pin point exactly where they had to slow down in order to arrive where they needed to go. They had to first travel from Earth to a far off planet called Vulcan in order to respond to a distress call. Hate to quote Star Wars while talking about a Star Trek movie (I was always more of a Star Wars fan myself), but

They come into an ambush by the Romulans, who were from the future (long story) who then destroy Vulcan but we'll get to that later on.

The Romulans then head off towards Earth, using warp drive of course, to destroy it. The enterprise decides to chase after them but instead of showing up at Earth, they stop in the outer moons of Saturn for cover.

So warp drive obviously has a huge impact on the movie and while yes it seems so fanciful, it's not quite reality. Vulcan isn't even a planet so if it was then it would be light years away. Which means that time would be shifted very dramatically after a jump to Vulcan. It could be years to everyone back on Earth while only a few minutes to them.

Now on to the red matter. Its even futuristic for the futuristic Star Trek scene. When reacted, the red matter creates a black hole.

Now back to Vulcan, the Romulans drilled a hole to the center of the planet and would then drop red matter into the center, causing a reaction, causing a black whole which would destroy the planet.

That's what they were planning to do to Earth as well. Spock and Kirk beamed aboard to steal the red matter and save their captain. They then crash the red matter into the Romulan ship creating a black hole.

I have no idea if this red matter can be created because it's from the distant future but who knows it could be possible.

Sunday, November 8, 2015

Having the responsibility of creating a bomb that can destroy cities and lay waste to entire counties if need be. The biggest internal problem would be the morality of it all. Sure it's difficult to create such a bomb when nothing like it had been created before, but in the end can you really destroy thousands of lives?

So, you've made the bomb that could end the war. Now you must decide to go through with it or not. You do what most people do, write down the pros and the cons.

Cons:

Destroy a city and leave the outskirts contaminated with radiation killing thousands upon thousands

Kill thousands of innocent people

The technology could be used down the road by the wrong people and nuclear wars could occur killing millions and possibly billions

The amount of guilt one could go through could send them into an awful state of mind

If more bombs are created, tensions would be high

Pros:

Could end the war

Saves many more lives on both sides of the fight than if actual warfare was carried out

Sends a message to the rest of the world of superiority

Paid handsomely I assume

All in all, I personally don't think that I could carry this out. Being responsible for killing thousands and destroying cities would be a huge burden I don't think I can carry. If this were the only thing that I did in science I'm still not sure I would do it. Peace can not be achieved with more death. For a time afterwards there would be peace, but, sooner or later more war and death will come. Creating this bomb would cause so much death it would take decades for countries to come to peace. This is just the start of it all. Other countries see what I have created and will either attempt to create it themselves or create something even more destructive, which will lead to other countries creating something more destructive than that. In my opinion, creating this weapon of mass destruction would cause nothing but more death for years to come.

Sunday, November 1, 2015

Global warming is a thing! It is not a myth there is definitive evidence of the Earth heating up as the years go by. Part of it is because of us. If we continue to tear down trees and emit terrible gases for our planet then there may be no planet to call home anymore.

This is not a coincidence, the Earth has had an exponential increase in temperature and its been doing so for the past century. I believe that once mankind became more technologically advanced, with the burning of fossil fuels, releasing CO2, and other harmful substances, the heat began to rise.

Sure it's a slow process, but the process is being done nonetheless. We can't be so selfish today and think, "Oh well future us can handle this situation easily." But, "future us" may not be capable quite yet or when the technology to fix the problem is available it could be too late. We need to stop this now before it becomes a problem in the future.﻿

Sunday, October 4, 2015

We have a dilemma by watching the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" today then when the movie was actually made in the 60's. Back then the visuals, plot, and concepts portrayed in this movie were an epic landmark in the movie making community. Now, this movie is out of date and some of the science and styling have changed. People now-a-days mostly want some mindless pictures on a screen, no one wants to really THINK about what they are watching. This movie is purely what the viewer perceives, of course the director gave you a little push to some sort of thought, but it is up to interpretation on what the movie itself actually means.

One of the only real problems with the physics in the movie was a scene where one of the astronauts is in the vacuum of space without a helmet on for a little over 30 seconds. This cant be proven per say because we don't know how tolerant the astronaut's body was to these conditions. The only other thing was the walking style of the astronauts on the surface of the moon. This was only because of a lack of resources. All in all the physics of the movie were fantastic.

The movie itself was fantastic! You will have to really pay attention to little details and think a lot but those, in my opinion, are the best type of movies. Instead of being just flashing lights on a big screen to entertain the audience for two hours, this actually had a deeper meaning to it. To me that shows that they actually put forth a ton of effort to make this movie as deep and as accurate as possible.

All in all I'd give this movie a solid 8 out of 10. Some of the scenes were unnecessarily drawn out when they could have possibly been cut in half. Instead of being 160 minutes the movie should have been cut down to at least 150 minutes. I know some of the drawn out scenes had a deeper meaning but there were a few that were just too long for no reason. The scene with the man talking to his daughter on the phone was, in my opinion, too much wasted time.

Sunday, September 13, 2015

In the movie the Eraser Arnold Schwarzenegger's character is attempting to stop the sale of a newly developed rail gun to the Soviet Union. This rail gun is able to shoot aluminum bullets at the speed of almost the speed of light, which is about 3 x 10^8 meters per second. In one scene, Arnold has control of a rain gun and shoots an enemy in the chest and he goes flying. The question is, was how far the enemy flew accurate? Also, how far should've Arnold flown back when he did shoot the gun?

First, we must start with the before and after of Arnold shooting the gun. The formula we will be using will be (Ma)(Vfa)+(Mb)(Vfb)=(Ma)(Via)+(Mb)(Vib) where Ma is mass of Arnold. Vfa is Velocity final of Arnold. Mb is Mass of bullet. Vfb is Velocity final of bullet. Via is Velocity initial of Arnold. Vib is Velocity initial of bullet.

Lets say the mass of the bullet was .01 Kg since the movie didn't inform us of some of the specifics. We will put Arnold at about 110 Kg. Obviously the initial velocity of both the bullet and Arnold are 0. And, since the movie stated "close to the speed of light we will put it at around 3x10^7 meters per second. All we need is the final velocity of Arnold. So that math will give us Vfa=-(.01Kg)(3x10^7m/s)/(110Kg). This gives us that Arnold will fly back at the speed of around 2727.27 meters per second. This proves that despite how large Arnold is, he would not have been able to hold his ground with this gun.

Now the before and after for the enemy. We will switch every "a" in the formula to an "e". We will also state that the bullet is lodged and stuck in the enemy so the enemy and the bullet have the same final velocity. So that gives us (Me)(Vfe)+(Mb)(Vfb)=(Me)(Vie)+(Mb)(Vib). Me will be 80 Kg. Mb is still .01 Kg. Vib is still going to be 3x10^7. And Vie is 0 meters per second. That will give us
Vfe=(.01Kg)(3x10^7m/s)/80Kg. That would make the enemy fly back at a speed of about 3750 meters per second. While the enemy did fly back very far, its just not quite far enough for good old physics.

Sunday, September 6, 2015

In the movie Mission Impossible 3, Agent Hunt is trying to once again save the world from terrorists. In one scene Agent Hunt must swing from one building to the next in order to get in the building. In order to know if it is in fact possible, lets look at some of the facts. The height of the taller building is 226 meters. The height of the smaller building was 162 meters. The two buildings are 47.55 meters apart. The time of the swing was about 15-20 seconds.

In the next scene, Agent Hunt is ironically being hunted by a drone on a bridge. The drone has blown a large hole on the bridge. He has to jump the gap in order to survive and destroy the drone. The gap of the bridge is approximately 20 feet. his acceleration was -9.81 meters/second squared. His initial velocity is 0 meters/second.

In the third scene, Agent Hunt is in a helicopter being chased by a helicopter through a field of windmill turbines. At one point Hunt's helicopter times the rotation of one turbine perfectly in order to get through leaving his enemies to be destroyed by the turbine. In order to know if this is possible we must know more. The rotation of the turbine was possibly about 1 rotation/second. The size of each blade was approximately 5 feet wide. The gap between the blade was about 15 feet. Now for the helicopter itself. By the looks of it the helicopter was maybe 15 feet tall and about 20 feet long. The helicopter must have been traveling about 80 mph so converted to meters per second is about 35.76 meters/second. The driver would have to time the rotation of the blades at just the right time in order to get through.